Canada failing veterans with mental illnesses: official watchdog

By David Ljunggren OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada is failing its veterans with mental illnesses, an official watchdog said on Tuesday in a stinging report that could hurt the Conservative government less than a year before the next election. Auditor General Michael Ferguson, who reports to Parliament, said the federal Veterans Affairs ministry was "not adequately facilitating timely access to mental health services". Ferguson said around 20 percent of veterans complained they had to wait more than eight months to access specialised mental health services, twice as long as they should have done. He blamed what he called a complex application process. Canada's right-of-centre Conservatives, who took power in early 2006, paint themselves as pro-military and have long courted veterans for support. Some veterans, however, complain about poor services and have promised to campaign against the party in an election scheduled for October 2015. Polls indicate the Conservatives could lose power. Demand for mental health services has soared in Canada, which maintained a military mission in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2013. Veterans with mental health conditions represent almost 12 percent of ex-soldiers receiving benefits from Veterans Affairs, up from less than two percent in 2002. Ferguson said demand would continue to increase as those who served in Afghanistan returned to civilian life. The audit also found that Veterans Affairs did not study how well it was serving veterans and whether its programs were making a difference. "Veterans Affairs is not able to demonstrate that services provided to meet the mental health needs of veterans are effective," it said. The government, which saw a copy of Ferguson's report ahead of it being made public, announced on Sunday it would spend an extra C$200 million (113.95 million pounds) over the next six years to address mental health issues among soldiers. Government accounts released earlier this month showed that more than C$1.1 billion in funding allocated to the veteran affairs ministry since 2006 had not been spent, which critics said was more evidence that veterans were being short-changed. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday the C$1.1 billion figure demonstrated that spending estimates at the ministry had been too high. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Paul Simao)